Details

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat
Security Response Team.

MySQL is a multi-user, multi-threaded SQL database server. MySQL is a
client/server implementation consisting of a server daemon (mysqld) and
many different client programs and libraries.

A flaw was found in the way the MySQL mysql_real_escape() function escaped
strings when operating in a multibyte character encoding. An attacker
could provide an application a carefully crafted string containing
invalidly-encoded characters which may be improperly escaped, leading to
the injection of malicious SQL commands. (CVE-2006-2753)

An information disclosure flaw was found in the way the MySQL server
processed malformed usernames. An attacker could view a small portion
of server memory by supplying an anonymous login username which was not
null terminated. (CVE-2006-1516)

An information disclosure flaw was found in the way the MySQL server
executed the COM_TABLE_DUMP command. An authenticated malicious user could
send a specially crafted packet to the MySQL server which returned
random unallocated memory. (CVE-2006-1517)

A log file obfuscation flaw was found in the way the mysql_real_query()
function creates log file entries. An attacker with the the ability to call
the mysql_real_query() function against a mysql server can obfuscate the
entry the server will write to the log file. However, an attacker needed
to have complete control over a server in order to attempt this attack.
(CVE-2006-0903)

This update also fixes numerous non-security-related flaws, such as
intermittent authentication failures.

All users of mysql are advised to upgrade to these updated packages
containing MySQL version 4.1.20, which is not vulnerable to these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. To use Red Hat Network,
launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command:

up2date

This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate
RPMs being upgraded on your system.